First and foremost, the human body is designed for walking. We are migrating creatures. We are not gazelles. We were not built to stand on all fours and bow our necks to graze, and we are not especially well designed for bursting into a sprint to escape a predator. Nature replaced that drive to burst and flee with intelligence and community. We became a smart group that could watch over the tribe. We were not self reliant like the lone tiger, or even like a pack of wolves. We gathered in numbers large enough to overpower and outthink every other creature around us.
We are designed for intelligent self defense and combat. We create weapons, and we have the intelligence to pass the knowledge of hand to hand combat down through our lineage. We are meant to build things, including the structures we live in. Look anywhere in history and it is obvious that humans have always been complex, structure building creatures. We have always been ingenious, and we have always used tools. Some cultures, like the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, relied on a small, portable set of tools, but even there, the tools were refined and essential to survival.
Humans likely figured out early that holding their breath or breathing poorly created a different kind of conscious state, one that was less useful for hunting, foraging, planting, protecting against predators, or managing conflict within the clan. It is important to recognize what our anatomy was designed for.
Much of what I am saying here is philosophical. I am imagining what people felt in different eras, based on my observations of humans. The body is a vehicle. It is a tool in itself, one that allows a higher consciousness to stay alive on this planet. Each conscious being learns something in a lifetime, and it seems likely that we are meant to return that learning to a collective consciousness so the species itself can learn. You can take that as metaphysical, or you can say it is simply obvious.
Here is an example. At some point, people figured out that walking barefoot in cold weather or over dense, rough terrain was impractical. In some cultures, barefoot living stopped making sense, even though it continued to make sense in parts of Africa and Australia. Some cultures said, life is hard enough as it is, so I am going to make a pair of shoes and make it a little less hard. Creature comforts followed: a pair of shoes, a loincloth, a pair of pajamas, a business suit.
The clothes we wear are designed to cover our nudity and our shame. They hide us from the masses and keep strangers from looking at our bodies and judging whether we measure up. Somewhere in human history, it became too uncomfortable to be naked and barefoot. We were changing. We were becoming domesticated animals, and our consciousness shifted along with us. Our awareness moved toward other things, like entertainment, music, alcohol, shopping, travel, luxury yachts, headphones, and $10,000 sneakers.
We should not label these things good or bad. We should simply observe them, the way we would observe something in our own minds. What is human behavior? That is the question we have to ask. Where does our wacky behavior come from? It is important for philosophers to examine people. Someone who just wants to live an ordinary life without overthinking might say, I don't need to think about this nonsense, it adds up to nothing. They might be right. But knowledge matters. Knowledge is a flashlight in the darkness of ignorance. In that darkness, humans cannot regulate their nervous systems, and eventually they feel compelled to react with harmful behavior. We develop addictions to cope with stress and anxiety, and we act them out unconsciously, without any real control.
The smartest way to approach fitness is to erase what you think you know. If your image of fitness is someone jogging on the boardwalk, that may be one version of it, but there are other possibilities. Erase the way you think about food, and stop judging how we gather it as right or wrong. Instead, think about how it has changed from the way we used to gather it. Food is far more certain today, for most people, than it has ever been on this earth. But what did we trade for that easy access? When food became too easy to get, did it make many of us gluttonous and hungry for more? Did the temptation of eating, and the momentary joy it brings to our chemistry, blind us to how to heal our bodies?
I am not saying this to shame or criticize you. I understand it because I lived through it myself. I grew up in a junk food society. I grew up in a violent society, raised on violent movies. I grew up consuming stuff, lots of stuff, and that conditioned me to think about life in a certain way. I can honestly say that way of thinking served me in some areas and made life very difficult in others. I put a lot of extra strain on myself with patterns of thought that I would only improve later, after a great deal of effort.